allbrews

The California
Craft Brewers Association recently announced another historic milestone:
California is now home to 700 craft breweries. That’s a stunning number,
up 124% from just four years ago.

“Our industry is
changing so fast right now it is literally making my head spin,” said Natalie
Cilurzo, co-owner of Russian River Brewing and president of the CCBA Board of
Directors. “For example, in 1994, when my husband opened his first brewery, we
bought the only high-quality growler available: the flip-top 2 liter Palla
bottle. Now there is a dizzying array of super-technical, high pressure-rated
insulated growlers in various materials, shapes and sizes available.”

Becoming a
commercial brewer is no less daunting today than it was when Natalie and Vinnie
Cilurzo opened Russian River Brewing — maybe even more so, given the stiff
competition. But unlike in the 1990s, organizations like the CCBA are eager to
help brewers navigate the business side of commercial craft brewing.

The annual California
Craft Beer Summit in September is a chance for new brewers to learn the nuances
of the beer business, pick up tips from veterans and make valuable contacts, as
well as for established breweries to keep up with the rapidly evolving California
craft beer industry.

“The Summit is a great opportunity
for networking in all tiers, particularly for someone who is new to the
industry,” said Cilurzo. “Looking back 20-plus years, having an event like
the Summit would have been extremely beneficial when we first started in the
industry. It’s everything you need, from insurance companies to
distributors and bankers to customers, all in one place,” she said.

“The Summit not only showcases the
growth and the excellence of California’s craft beer industry, but
provides educational and networking opportunities for new and growing
breweries to improve the quality of their beer, build distribution channels,
learn about new equipment or services that support the industry, and
stand out in front of craft beer lovers in a growing industry,” said Leia
Ostermann, managing director of the CCBA.

“One of the most valuable parts of
the Summit for newer brewery owners is meeting the brewers that have walked the
path before them, building friendships and a network to call on if needed,
and bonding with the community of commercial brewers across the state,” she
said.

“Attending the talks and educational
seminars is a great way for new brewers to learn about trade practices,
different beer styles and the history of our industry,” Cilurzo said. “The
ability to network with so many people is invaluable for anyone new to the
industry. Even as a seasoned vet to craft beer, I still ask questions and
learn from others at events like the Summit,” she said.

Educational seminars and networking can
help all breweries avoid some of the legal pitfalls that might crop up in areas
such as marketing and social media advertising. “Laws and regulations are
changing rapidly, the marketplace is becoming more competitive, and it’s
important to stay up to date with changes and transitions in the industry to
succeed as a craft brewer in California,” Ostermann said. “The Summit
provides all of this and more to California’s craft beer family,” she
added.

“This year’s Summit includes five
educational tracks specific to brewers and the beer industry,” Ostermann said.
“These tracks include business and industry sessions to improve understanding
and knowledge of the marketplace, hospitality and retail training, building a
brand and throwing events for beer lovers, technical skills and
cicerone tasting classes, and a special ‘meet a distributor’ session,
allowing one-one-one opportunities for brewers to meet new distribution
partners at the Summit.

The Summit concludes with a massive
party on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento. Beer lovers will have an opportunity
to enjoy brews that they might not otherwise see.

“At the Summit Beer Festival, we
have more than 160 California breweries pouring 450 beers from all over the
state, including special releases, hard-to-find beers and possibly even a
firkin,” said Ostermann. “Many of the breweries pouring at the Summit don’t
distribute outside of their home towns, so you’ll have a chance to taste new
beers and new styles that you won’t be able to try anywhere. It truly is a
tasting tour through California craft beer.”

Cilurzo considers the Summit “our
premier event in California, and California brewers are bringing their
A-game. I’m bringing Pliny the Elder, our flagship double IPA, and a new
sour beer that has never been released for sale to the public. It’s a
surprise!”

Muster the craft brewers
from the San Francisco Brewers Guild aboard the
historic WWII Liberty ship SS Jeremiah O’Brien docked at scenic
Pier 45 on Fisherman’s Wharf, add live music and food trucks, and what do you have?
The answer is, one hell of a party.

The 12th
annual Brews on the Bay from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24, promises to
be bigger and better than ever, with 24 San Francisco breweries pouring more
than 60 beers, up from 18 breweries a year ago.

The guild recently confirmed that
music will be provided by country/Americana bands Slow Motion Cowboys and Assateague.
Food will be available from Korean BOBCHA (Korean and Asian Fusion), Kabob
Trolley (cheesesteaks, Middle Eastern, halal and gluten free), Subs on Hubs (sandwiches,
gyros and Italian), and Street Fusion (Vietnamese, healthy food, organic and gluten
free).

This
year’s event honors the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead and
the spooky spirit of Halloween.

Brews on the Bay is
a rare opportunity to sample beer from San Francisco craft breweries all in one
place and to celebrate the people who make it. San Francisco brewers took home
five medals from this year’s Great American Beer Festival, including Social
Kitchen’s Kim Sturdevant, who won a gold medal for his English-style pale ale,
Mr. Kite.

New executive
director

Along with the new
breweries, the San Francisco Brewers Guild is welcoming a new executive
director. Joanne Marino might be new to the guild, but she’s no stranger to
beer or San Francisco. Marino co-produced Austin Beer Week and she’s lived in
San Francisco since 2012. Marino also has a technology background. She’s been a
partner at Skematic, a consultancy focused on startups and early-stage
businesses, since 2002.

In a recent
interview, Marino noted the similarities between starting a tech business and
opening a brewery. “At the heart, that spark of creativity that both a tech
startup and a startup brewer brings to the table is passion,” Marino said. “That’s
what motivates people and hopefully that’s there for both industries: to
continue to run on passion and make something that’s useful and loved by the
community.”

Brews on the Bay is
one of the three pillars of the San Francisco Brewers Guild, along with San
Francisco Beer Week and the monthly meet the brewer events at San Francisco
breweries. “The
meet the brewer nights are not just for the public,” said Marino. “They’re a
way for the brewers to get together and support eachother. The leading
statesmen in the guild are ready to answer technical and business questions.
It’s structured to be supportive of what can be an overwhelming process:
getting a new business off the ground and running it successfully.”

Beer Week starts early

Because San Francisco is
hosting the Super Bowl, SF Beer Week will begin earlier than usual, with the
opening gala on Jan. 22, 2016, at Pier 35. Expect 100-120 breweries.

In conjunction with SF Beer
Week, the guild is organizing a friendly competition between teams of brewers
from the north side of Market Street against their counterparts to the south.
Team NOMA and Team SOMA will each brew a collaboration beer that will be
released at the opening gala. Craft beer fans will be invited to share their
comments about their favorite collaboration beer.

A few tips for
enjoying Brews on the Bay:

• Don’t drive. Take
public transportation, such as the historic F car, or walk along the
Embarcadero.

• Hydrate. Drink a
glass of water for every beer you have. Even though the Jeremiah O’Brien is not
scheduled to leave the dock, your legs can get wobbly after several beers.

• Request half
pours. The servers will likely be generous with their pours, but if you plan to
sample a lot of beers, ask them not to fill your glass (pouring out in buckets
is OK, too).

• Don’t forget to
eat. Make sure not to drink on an empty stomach. The alcohol by volume in beer
is relatively low compared with spirits and wine, but the alcohol still adds up
after a while. Food is available from the trucks on the dock.

• Make conversation.
Meet the brewers and ask them about their beer. You’ll be amazed what you might
learn. Also, talk to the volunteer crew that maintains the beautiful ship. They
are a treasure trove of information.

Taking on
an entire four-legged herbivore, nose to tail, breaking it down and creating a
seven-dish menu is a daunting proposition for any chef. More so if that animal
is a lamb, with a distinctive flavor profile that could easily seem repetitive
after a while. Then, just for the hell of it, pair the all-lamb menu with all
of the beers on the tap list. Thirsty Bear Organic Brewery Chef Rob McCarthy
was up to the task, and along the way he discovered some dishes that we hope
will find a permanent place on the brewpub’s small plates menu.

Thirsty
Bear was one of four American restaurants chosen to participate in this week’s
“Brews, Ewe’s, and BBQ’s,” sponsored by the American Lamb Board to highlight a
meat that is popular around the world but somewhat underappreciated in the
United States.

McCarthy
included beer in several of his recipes and paired Thirsty Bear’s beers not so
much with the meat as with the overall flavors of the dishes. Although the menu
listed beer pairing suggestions, we ordered a tasting flight of all of Thirsty
Bear’s regular beers, as well as a couple of new IPAs, to experiment with our
own combinations.

Right off
the bat, McCarthy knocked it out of the park with an ambitious Merguez Sausage
dish that included grilled octopus, potato and lemon, pimenton aioli and pea
sprouts. McCarthy made the sausage himself (although casings were not provided
with the lamb) and slow cooked, then grilled the octopus so that it was tender
with an endearing smoky flavor. It all came together with the aioli and lemon.
Although the menu suggested pairing the dish with Polar Beer Pilsner, we liked
it even better with the Valencia Wheat, which seemed to pick up on the citrus
flavors while complementing the Merguez sausage and balancing the grilled
flavor of the octopus. McCarthy said he wants to keep this one on the menu, and
we heartily agree.

Lamb
Belly Pastrami was another standout. Nicely poached asparagus and eggy sauce
gribiche accentuated the many flavors of the deftly cured lamb belly. Grilled
Lamb T-bone consisted of a small, thick, flavorful chop that we preferred
medium rare rather than the suggested medium. The T-bone was accompanied by a
lemon-mint gremolata and marinated fava beans. It paired nicely with the Citra
Double Down IPA, brewed for last week’s IPA Day.

In
another dish, a pair of Piquillo Peppers were stuffed with ground lamb and rice
and bathed in a sherry tomato cream sauce. Thirsty Bear was right to suggest
pairing those hearty, delicate flavors with their Meyer ESB.

McCarthy
was clearly stoked by the lamb challenge, and he didn’t forget the offal,
either. Lambs Head Cheese was served almost like a pate, with Challenger
Hop Mustard, atop grilled bread. We thought that toast or something crispier
would have stood up better to the headcheese. Lamb Sweetbreads came fried
and puffy with heirloom tomatoes and tiny flavorful padron peppers. You’ll
either love them or hate them.

Thirsty
Bear will be serving the seven-dish beer-pairing menu all week, and if we’re
lucky we’ll see at least a few of the dishes on the restaurant’s regular small
plate menu.

As craft beer asserts
itself as part of the mainstream, it is becoming a necessary part of trendy new
pubs and bars.

About 10 years ago,
Paul Kermizian, who directed the 2002 craft beer documentary, American Beer,
and a few of his friends bet they could make a business out of two of their
favorite pastimes: playing classic video games and drinking good beer. In 2004,
they opened their first Barcade in an old metal shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Four more followed, including two in New York in 2014. Beer and arcade-themed
pubs have since sprung up in Chicago, Omaha and Indianapolis, and now in San
Francisco.

Brewcade on Market
Street offers an intriguing prospect to grizzled ‘80s
arcade veterans and retro-chic millennials alike: The opportunity to wrap their
itchy trigger fingers around a breed of uniquely satisfying video games sadly on
the verge of extinction. The beer is the easy part. Success will require
Brewcade owners Shawn Vergara and Tiffny Vergara Chung to invest as much care
and creativity in the quality of the games as they do in the taps and bottles,
if not more.

The Beer

The beer list is
promising, though a little unfocused. That’s
to be expected as the brand new pub finds its footing with its video gamer
customers. For now, the 25 taps and numerous bottles tick most of the boxes
that beer drinkers have come to expect: usual suspects like Sierra Nevada Pale
Ale, Anchor Steam and Racer 5, along with some unexpected pleasures, such as Fort
Point Kolsch, Heretic Shallow Grave Porter, Henhouse’s Honest Day’s
Pay Tart Saison and on nitro, Ryrish Dry Irish Stout from Mountain Toad
Brewing. Adjusting the taps to suit the clientele shouldn’t be too difficult,
though dedicated craft beer drinkers might still prefer the classic pub
ambience of Lucky 13 down the block.

The Games

As most local
arcade goers know, you'd be hard-pressed to find a real video arcade anywhere
in the Bay Area. The economy hasn't been kind to any establishment trying to
make a buck off arcade cabs. Most have closed down and their games languish in
storage.

Walking into
Brewcade, I was happily greeted with the familiar blend of arcade sounds and
fuzzy ‘80s monitor glow. A well-used Neo Geo
cab hummed away up front, and it was nice to see a Paperboy cab complete with
bicycle handle controller andCentipede.
A panel TV was showing a movie with the sound off and the juke box rumbled
loudly against the din of the machines.

I usually gravitate
toward shooting games like R-Type II and the 19xx series. One of the nicest
aspects of arcades is how social they can be, with onlookers clustering around
more experienced players to see how it’s done and to pick up new strategies against
some of the seemingly impossible stages of games.

For arcade game
newbies, these games are real quarter-munchers. I'm sure that having a few too
many beers only adds to the hilarity of “Game Overs!” leading to even more
coins spent out of frustration. (Arcade etiquette demands that you put your
quarters on the cabinet or screen of the machine as your place in line. Don't
just feed the machine until you run out of money.)

I liked the way the
arcade cabinets were spaced out, and the cup-holders by each game were an
excellent touch. Overall I really like the idea of a bar and an arcade, and
think it's a perfect marriage of two wonderful things. However, there are a few
questions/suggestions I'd like to address.

What’s up with the
games?

Are there more?

The Neo Geo
cabinet, for instance, is a cartridge based game system built with swapping in
mind. Could players like my friend Myung Kim and myself request game board
changes in some of the cabinets? Swapping out boards could be an attractive
option for people who want to play different games.

If the owners
offered this to their gamer customers, they'd have a grateful and loyal
following for the rest of their days.

Smooth buttons and
joysticks, please

The game cabs could
badly use some TLC. Nothing crazy—just a little maintenance on the
buttons and joysticks.

Also the coin slots
are in dire need of fixing. They ate at least a dollar’s worth of my
quarters and I know I'm not the only one. And I wasn't please that my button
jammed the entire duration of my game.

These are good
machines; they just need regular maintenance to function properly. Most of them
carry inexpensive American Happ parts, which are cheap to swap out.

To sum up:

1) Recap and retune
the screens

2) Replace the
buttons (some of the sticks on the older games are harder to get new, but all
the buttons are standard happ parts you can get for cheap)

3) Repair the coin
mechs (they eat too many coins)

4) Replace the blue
elf and pandora boards with original hardware and cycle through the games more

(Special thanks to
Myung Kim for his input and expertise on this matter)

The gamer in me
really hopes arcades will make a comeback, but if my only alternative was a
beer and Puzzle Bobble, I'd say Brewcade was doing it right.